I wanted a space within which movement would create a feeling of freedom, stirring up the senses, and where the exhibit would be a surprise within the movement. I wanted to avoid that coercion you feel in a museum, when you're forced to look at a lot of works in a specific order; because we remember how our heart leaps when we go into a little country church, but we usually forget what we've seen in a museum. Kyriakos Krokos, 1989


Kyriakos Krokos
Kyriakos Krokos

The Museum of Byzantine Culture is housed in a modern building 11.500 mē wide, of which 3.000 mē comprise the permanent exhibition area. It also includes spacey and well-organised conservation laboratories and storerooms, a small amphitheatre, a café-restaurant and a separate wing for temporary exhibitions, a space of 300 mē. 


The building was constructed between the years 1989-1993 on the plans of the talented architect Kyriakos Krokos (1941-1998), a personality both ruminant and poetic. The building, severe and abstemious, made with exceptionally combined modern materials and characterised by construction of high quality, joins together elements of modernism and of the greek architectural heritage. Among the best works of public architecture of the last decades in Greece, it has been received a special notion by the international committee of the competition Awards 2000 of the Hellenic Institute for Architecture. In 2001 the Ministry of Culture has declared it a historically listed monument, and a work of art.